Social networking services allow users to author and share messages with multiple users. For example, a first user can author and publish a message for other users to read. The messages can be any of a variety of lengths which may be limited by a specific messaging system or protocol. For example, a short messaging service protocol typically limits messages to 140 characters in length.
Users interested in viewing messages authored by a particular user can choose to follow the particular user. A first user can follow a second user by identifying the second user as a user the first user would like to follow. After the first user has indicated that they would like to follow the second user, the first user will be provided with messages authored by the second user. Users can choose to follow multiple users. Users can also respond to messages and thereby have conversations with one another. Both unidirectional (e.g., follower/followee) and bidirectional (e.g., friendship) relationships may exist, depending on the type of network.
A conversation can include a root message and any number of messages directly or indirectly in reply to the root message. A conversation graph is a data structure which represents two or more messages in a conversation as nodes, with edges connecting the nodes based on a reply structure of the conversation. Users can view a conversation based on messages included in the conversation graph. However, when a conversation includes a large number of messages, the number of messages displayed can be very large and may overwhelm the user.